


Behind a Closed Door

by ancarett



Category: Smallville
Genre: Challenge Response, Community: 12days_of_clois, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-20
Updated: 2009-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 01:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancarett/pseuds/ancarett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lois needs to make copies. Frustration ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind a Closed Door

**Author's Note:**

> For a challenge at [12days_of_clois](http://community.livejournal.com/12days_of_clois/) on LJ.
> 
> Set in the first half of season eight.

"Copy boy," Lois carolled, holding up a sheaf of papers without looking away from her computer screen. Nobody answered and the hand stubbornly poised above her.

Clark sighed in exasperation. "Lois, you and I both know that stories are submitted electronically. I am not taking your story up to the editor's desk."

He leaned back in his chair at the desk opposite hers and twirled a pencil while Lois slowly raised her gaze from the computer screen to smile in satisfaction. "I know it and maybe now I know that you know it, too, but it was still worth a try."

Clark just rolled his eyes and prepared to go back to the story he was writing when Lois cleared her throat expectantly.

"What?" he asked, letting a tone of annoyance bleed through despite his best efforts at control. Lois was too good at getting his goat.

"I really need these copied, Clark. Suresh at the morgue let me 'borrow' these and I've got to return them by tomorrow morning at the latest," Lois explained.

Clark snorted. "Then do it yourself, Lois."

"I would, Clark, but I'm waiting on a source to phone me back," Lois said. She wiggled the papers enticingly. "Come on, Smallville?"

Clark turned back to his keyboard dismissively. "Sorry, Lois, but I actually do have copy to get to the editor myself."

With an angry snort, Lois launched herself out of her chair and stalked off to the copy room herself. "Thanks a lot, Clark," she snarled.

A couple of the other staffers just gave Clark sympathetic nods as she slipped past them, grumbling. Clark sighed inwardly, knowing that the satisfaction of having told Lois off would be repaid with hours, if not days, of needling and annoyances. Yes, they were friends and co-workers, but sometimes it seemed as if Lois Lane just couldn't resist bugging him.

"She's more like a schoolgirl than a reporter," Clark mumbled under his breath as his fingers automatically returned to typing out the story he'd been assigned about after-school recreational program funding cuts. The private thought made him chuckle a little, picturing a pint-sized Lois poking and prodding a younger version of himself.

As he lost himself in the story, time passed unnoticed. Eventually, Lois's phone rang and Clark looked up, surprised not to see Lois back at her desk. The shadows through the window were lengthening by now and Lois had been in the copy room awhile. Most of the other staff had headed home, he noticed.

The call went to voicemail and Clark rose from his chair. "Lois?" he called. He cautiously extended his sense of hearing which, if he thought about it, always kept a little check on Lois since that incident with Sebastian. Her regular heartbeat was all that he detected.

Clark called her name again, a bit louder. When no answer came, he circled around the desks and made his way to the copy room. Tucked away beside the supply room entrance, the blank metal door offered no answers.

Clark turned the knob. The thick door, obviously heavy if one was human and not Kryptonian, swung easily open to his touch.

Clark peered into the quiet copy room. It appeared to be deserted at first glance, but the sound of her heartbeat was stronger, here. "Lois," he called uncertainly, and then stepped inside, letting his hand drop away from the doorknob. Clark squinted slightly as he focused his eyesight beyond the normal world of copy machines and walls to see what Lois had gotten up to that had kept her here in the copy room for hours. He warily swept the room with his x-ray vision, finding nothing but a few odd bits of machine parts and an empty pop can. Just as he focused towards the far end of the room, he heard a sudden whoosh of air. Propelled by a stiff breeze from _The Planet's_ AC, the door slammed shut behind him.

"Clark!" Lois shrieked, jumping from behind a tall cabinet at the other end of the room. One hand was fumbling at the frame of the small window, carefully protected by heavy metal grating. The dust on her suit skirt suggested she'd wedged back there for quite some time. Her blouse was rumpled and her hair half-fallen from her previous up-do but all Clark noticed, as she dropped what she was doing and raced down the room toward him, was how beautiful she was.

Lois, beautiful? Well, no, she was attractive, but not Clark's type, he corrected himself. But she was certainly lively at this exact moment. However, it was a liveliness with which Clark was all too familiar: the liveliness of Lois on the rampage.

She levered past him in the long, narrow room to pull, fruitlessly on the door. "Damnit, Clark," she asked as she braced one foot against the door and yanked, "why did you let the door close behind you?"

"What's the problem, Lois?" Clark asked as he watched her struggle with the door to no avail. He couldn't help but let a small smile dance on his lips as he watched the epic battle between door and Lois Lane.

"Hello? Anybody? Hello!" Lois shouted, and pounded on the door. Clark shook his head. The heavy steel door, obviously added to the building at some point in the past to reduce fire hazards, muffled her voice and Clark inwardly cursed himself for not keeping a closer watch on Lois earlier.

"Um, Lois, if you'd let me help?" Clark's offer petered out as she stonily ignored him. Lois shot one scornful look over her shoulder before essaying a last pull on the unimpressed doorknob. Releasing it with a gusty sigh, Lois spun on her heels, crossed her arms and stared at Clark. His lips twitched again and he reached out to pull a strand of hair from alongside her nose and tuck it behind one ear.

"If you hadn't noticed, _Copy Boy_, we're stuck in the copy room. More importantly, I've been stuck in this copy room for over two hours, now, ever since the lock broke when I came in." Lois sighed and looked over Clark's shoulder. "After calling for fifteen minutes and nobody giving a damn, I've been trying to unscrew the security screen off of the window over there. Pretty tough when I don't even have a nail file with me and nobody's seen fit to leave even a basic toolkit here."

Lois made to show Clark her work at the other end of the room. He opened his mouth to say something, but lost track of that as she brushed up hard against him and he felt a rush of warmth. Instinctively, he raised his hands to stop her, earning yet another glare. "Do you mind?" she asked in some annoyance.

Clark noticed that her cheeks were suddenly flushed and her pupils were dilated. But that was probably because of the relative darkness of the room and the effects of her temper, he told himself. After all, she'd told him at the elevator, just a few weeks back, that she didn't feel anything for him.

And, if he was suddenly flustered and tongue-tied, well, Clark told himself it was nothing new. It was just the effects of working around Lois. He noticed her staring back at him, almost plastered against him and the moment stretched out until she seemed to realize what was happening. With renewed vigour, Lois attempted to push past him.

"I'm trying. . . just. . .Lois!" Clark gave up trying to put whatever it was he was trying to say into words and squished himself gingerly backwards into a miniscule space between two copiers. Lois snorted and stomped past.

"I don't suppose that you brought your cell, did you Clark? Or a Swiss army knife or anything useful." She pulled a piece of plastic, obviously broken off of one of the rails of the copy machine's feeder tray, and began to work it against the head of a screw, trying to twist the well-seated fastener.

"Lois," Clark began warningly.

She flashed a glance over at him and struggled some more. "Just as I figured. You sure couldn't have been a Boy Scout, Smallville, because I don't think this counts as "always prepared."

Clark looked around. With his superpowers, it would be easy to get them out of this. His x-ray vision could see that the lock tumblers were frozen, but he could "engineer" a sudden loosening. But as he looked the door up and down and a sudden solution occurred to him, elegant and perfect.

Clark smiled with a real sense of satisfaction. "Lois," he called, knowing she'd ignore him as she wrestled with the window screen. He heard her muttering, under her breath, imprecations on farm boys and country hicks and do-nothing co-workers.

"Lo-is," he merrily sang out. She didn't acknowledge his call and Clark shrugged.

With a broad smile on his face, Clark reached down and pulled out one long pin from the lower door hinge. Then he straightened up and did the same on the upper hinge. Putting one hand under the now unattached door, he lightly set aside the heavy slab of metal that had blocked her exit.

Clark turned around and cleared his throat loudly. Lois paid no attention. He tried again only to be met with her continued and seemingly impenetrable non-response.

"Um, Lois," he finally said. "I'm going. See you tomorrow, I guess." Clark made to leave, but looked back with one last smile. How long would Pit-Bull Lois wrestle with the grill?

"Oh, ha-ha-ha, funny, Clark," Lois said as she turned around in exasperation. Then her mouth gaped open and Clark found himself enjoying one of those rare moments in his life when he'd rendered Lois speechless.

"How did you do that?" Lois demanded, as she sprinted down the room to the open doorway, pushing him out into the quiet hallway as she exited herself.

"The hinges, Lois," Clark said, opening one hand to show her the two silvery pins. "I just took them out of the door and voila!"

Lois glanced uncomprehendingly back and forth between the pins and the open doorway behind them. "You mean," she began, gesturing wildly, "you mean all I had to do was this and that and, boom!, I'd have been out?"

"Hours ago," Clark happily confirmed, even if he doubted it would have been quite that easy for Lois to have shouldered the dead-weight of the metal door aside. Not that it mattered what he said. Lois continued to stare at the open doorway.

"Anyway, I'll just give maintenance a call," Clark said, as he stepped back and away, heading to the reporting desks. "I'll let them know someone needs to fix that door. See you tomorrow!"

"Right," Lois drawled in a distracted tone, still not looking back at him. One hand reached out and shoved at the heavy door that resisted even her most determined effort. Lois cocked one eyebrow and whirled about to question Clark, but he was nowhere in sight.

"Damnit," Lois grumbled. She looked down at herself, sighed gustily at the dust, sweat and dirt that festooned her outfit and then threw up her hands before making her way back to her desk. "I am so getting a copier-printer for my desk from supply tomorrow." She picked up her cell, noting the missed call with a sigh, and stuffed it in her purse.

"This definitely calls for a tub of Cherry Garcia and maybe some Chunky Monkey, too," Lois said to herself as she made her way out of the office. "The day that Smallville pulls one like that over on me? Am I losing my touch?"

As she waited at the elevator, Lois shook her head in cocky reassurance. "Nah. That was just a one-off. A fluke. It'll never happen again." With a jaunty smile, she was on her way, unaware that around the corner, someone clad in red and blue waited, watching to ensure that she made it home with no further problems. Then, in a blur of colour, he was gone.


End file.
